Sustainability in Film & TV: Consumption, Virtual Production, Remote Workflows and Travel Management Hold the Future

While it’s widely thought that the chief culprit of carbon emissions is the airline industry, recent data suggests that global video entertainment is actually worse for the planet. An average day of filming generates more than one person’s annual carbon footprint, while an average hour filming is equivalent to the carbon footprint of a return flight from London to New York. There are a number of studies and ongoing discussions that echo the industry’s concern and attention to the matter.

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Industry-Led Efforts Toward Sustainable Production

Over a decade ago, a consortium of film, TV and streaming companies formed the Sustainable Production Alliance (SPA) which includes Amazon Studios, Amblin Partners, Disney, Fox, NBCU, Netflix, Sony Pictures, ViacomCBS and WarnerMedia. From their early work developing a Green Production Guide in 2010, through today, they are actively engaged in launching meaningful initiatives and accelerating the transformation of the entertainment business into a more sustainable industry.

It’s now apparent that the carbon footprint for production is immense. The SPA found that even medium-sized films have an average carbon footprint of 769 metric tons of CO2 emissions, with blockbusters generating 1,081 metric tons per production.

And yet, the industry is making progress. Only a year earlier, the British Film Institute had released a major report into video entertainment sustainability and found films with budgets of over $70m produce an average of 2,840 tons of CO2 per production – a figure equivalent to the amount absorbed by 3,700 acres of forest in one year. 

Further and more profound change is required. In addition to promoting recycling, using renewable energy (such as EVs), and reducing material waste (such as single use plastics), there are many more approaches that film production can adopt to make the process more sustainable.

Carbon Measurement and Certification Challenges

Accurate measurement of carbon footprint is a crucial component and certification from Production Guild of America, BAFTA’s Albert, EcoProd’s Carbon Clap initiative among other bodies helps encourage our industry to make a positive change. However, there is still no standardised measurement, which creates difficulties in creating a holistic approach to calculating carbon output across the industry overall.

“Intentions are great of course, as are the number of documented case studies of film and TV shows driving out carbon waste and improving efficiency but arguably these are nowhere near universal enough to make the impact that really matters,” says Sohonet’s CEO Chuck Parker.  “We can’t just leave all the work to the next generation of content creators who have grown up with urgent climate sensitivity. Every single production can do more today to drive down CO2 with a remote production environment that has a definitive positive impact on budget and toward saving the planet.”

‍Virtual production & remote production technologies

One way of cutting down on production carbon output is to use virtual production. Data suggests that filming vehicle shoots on volume stages could reduce emissions up to 90% over conventional filming. 

And while the airline industry may not be the biggest contributor, travel and its related costs are significant carbon criminals in production. All research points to the vast bulk of CO2 emissions in production being transport related. Fuel — used in production vehicles and generators — typically was the largest source of greenhouse-gas emissions on film and TV productions, representing 48%-56% of emissions for films and 58% for scripted TV dramas, per SPA findings.

The Cost Savings of Going Green

One challenge is how to make going green an appealing prospect for productions who are under big pressure to keep costs down. One answer is to point out that green practices save money. And with approximately 30% of a film's budget associated with travel, remote technologies make sense both environmentally but financially too. 

Accelerated by the pandemic, remote production technologies are reducing and sometimes eliminating travel associated with productions. The early days of lockdown sent the industry into a spin from which it quickly recovered upon realisation that remote workflow can be robust, secure and just as if not more creative and productive than everyone being present in a suite or on set.

The Impact of Cloud Technology in Production Workflows

That momentum has carried through in the last couple of years as the industry adopted flexible hybrid workflows as the norm. This will only continue as we accelerate the transition to cloud-native workflows. Cloud technology consumes 20% of the energy footprint of on-premises data centres running the same workload, rates Futuresource.

The carbon awareness study ‘Video Shouldn’t Cost the Earth’, produced in collaboration with environmental management consultancy Green Element suggests that embracing cloud-native technologies “will lead to immediate reductions in emissions caused by production equipment, travel, physical network infrastructure, servers with heavy processing demands, housing for such equipment and the data transfer of large media files.”

Today, many productions mandate a sustainability officer as part of the line management. In many cases the sustainable option will also be the option that saves a production’s bottom line, as well as meeting SDG goals.

Back in 2018, the Motion Picture Association of America stressed how studios are cutting down on waste. Members of the SPA have made documented efforts to change their procedures. Netflix, for example, is aiming to reduce direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions (Scope 1 and 2 emissions) by 45% by 2030. NBCUniversal has committed to being carbon neutral by 2035 and Sony intends to have no environmental footprint throughout any of their products and activities by 2050.

It is the delivery and consumption of video entertainment that seems to burn most energy. 

More than a billion hours of content is consumed on a single streaming platform every single day, and as a consequence the video streaming industry’s annual carbon footprint now exceeds that of the airline industry.

Building a Sustainable Future in Entertainment

Clearly, sustainability is a multi-tiered complex problem that will require a sustained, integrated effort. Travel management, remote workflows, virtual production and other parts of the production puzzle must be continually analysed and integrated.  Consumption plays a critical role too, and this may be where the industry puts pressure on major streaming service providers and cloud data centre owners to do more, much more, to cut carbon. As in every part of a more sustainable future, knowledge, understanding and a multi-pronged approach is required of us all.

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